Filly May Join Fellows in Derby

BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. — Trainer Nick Zito, who has won the Kentucky Derby twice -- with colts -- said he would never run a filly in the race. Leroy Jolley disagreed, but then he would, wouldn’t he? Jolley is one of only three trainers to win the Derby with a female.

The Derby decision, regarding the undefeated filly Halfbridled, is more than six weeks off for the Santa Anita-based trainer, Richard Mandella, but already horsemen as far away as the Palm Meadows training center here are weighing in with opinions. Halfbridled, whose early progress as a 3-year-old was hampered by a cough, will run for the first time since her Breeders’ Cup win Oct. 25 when she faces seven rivals, including the formidable A.P. Adventure, in Saturday’s Santa Anita Oaks.

After that, Mandella has penciled in the Ashland, a race restricted to fillies, at Keeneland on April 3. “Then,” Mandella said, “I hope I have a big decision to make Derby weekend.”

That decision would determine whether Halfbridled, whose sire, Unbridled, won the Derby in 1990, remains in the filly division and runs in the Kentucky Oaks on April 30, or the next day becomes the fourth female to run in the Derby in the last 16 years. The last filly to win the race was Winning Colors in 1988. The other filly winners were Regret in 1915 and Genuine Risk, trained by Jolley, in 1980.

“I really don’t see the challenge of running a filly against the colts in the Derby,” said Zito, who will run two of his three Derby contenders Saturday at Gulfstream Park, 50 miles southeast of here. “I just don’t see it. Another thing about running good fillies against colts, I think it takes something out of them and maybe doesn’t help them down the line, when they’re bred and you’re expecting them to produce really great babies.”

Zito, who is running The Cliff’s Edge on Saturday in the Florida Derby and Eurosilver in the Swale later on the Gulfstream card, cited Winning Colors and Genuine Risk as horses who battled colts and then were not successful at breeding. Genuine Risk, at 27 the oldest living Derby winner, was withdrawn from breeding by her owners, Bert and Diana Firestone, a few years ago and resides on their farm near Upperville, Va. Genuine Risk produced only two living foals, neither of whom got to the races.

Jolley, who also won the Derby with a colt, Foolish Pleasure, in 1975, doesn’t feel that Genuine Risk’s running against colts -- she faced them in all three Triple Crown races, as well as in the pre-Derby Wood Memorial -- was a reason for her failure as a broodmare.

“The way it’s been explained to me,” said the 65-year-old Jolley, a Hall of Famer who’s trying to revive a flagging career, “is that [Genuine Risk] had so much trouble with her first foal that it made it difficult for her to [deliver] many others. That was the problem, not what she did on the racetrack.

“If [Halfbridled] was my horse, I’d consider running her against males. It’s possible that she might be good enough to beat them. She ran like she was 1 to 5 in the Breeders’ Cup, and she won all three of her races before that just as easily. She’s a very good filly.”

While Halfbridled hasn’t run in about 4 1/2 months, A.P. Adventure, who’s unbeaten in three races, has won two stakes at Santa Anita this winter. Both horses have been nominated for the Triple Crown series. In Churchill Downs’ future-book betting this week, Halfbridled’s opening odds were 20-1 for the Derby and 3-1 for the Kentucky Oaks. A.P. Adventure was 8-1 for the Oaks and was lumped in with the mutuel field for the Derby. A.P. Adventure’s owners, Bob and Beverly Lewis, haven’t been outspoken about possibly running in the Derby, but the Lewises owned one of the few fillies, Serena’s Song, to run in the race in recent years. Serena’s Song led the race for a mile before finishing 16th in 1995.

Besides Halfbridled, Mandella has two colts -- Action This Day and Minister Eric -- who might run in the Derby. Action This Day is scheduled to run in the San Felipe Stakes at Santa Anita on Sunday.